1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a flap control apparatus of a vehicle and a control method thereof and, more particularly, to a flap control apparatus of a vehicle that can control flaps, disposed at a front side of the vehicle to adjust inflow of air into a radiator, and can carry out a fail-safe operation to allow a corresponding flap to be opened by drive wind pressure by releasing the corresponding flap from a locked state upon occurrence of a malfunction making the flaps substantially non-operative, and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a radiator is a heat exchanger provided to a vehicle to emit heat from a water-cooling type engine to air and cools the cooling water which absorbs heat while passing through a cooling water passage in a cylinder block and a cylinder head.
The radiator cools the cooling water heated in the engine by allowing the cooling water to come into contact with air while passing through a heat sink, and has a high heat dissipation amount per unit area and low resistance to the flow of cooling water.
To improve cooling effects, the radiator is located at a front side of a vehicle to remove heat using drive wind. The radiator includes metal plates, which are made of a material having high thermal conductivity and overlap each other to have a gap therebetween, and a tube through which cooling water passes, thereby improving the cooling effect.
However, when the vehicle is in a cold state, cold air is unnecessarily introduced from outside into the radiator during driving of the vehicle, so that time for heating the engine is delayed, thereby not only deteriorating engine performance, but also increasing emissions.
In recent years, on-off controllable flaps are provided to a back surface of a front bumper grill of the vehicle to control the amount of air flowing into the radiator depending on temperature variation of cooling water for the engine, thereby improving both engine performance and air cooling performance by ensuring a sufficient time for heating the engine.
It should be noted that the above description is provided for understanding of the background of the invention and is not a description of a conventional technique well-known in the art.
In operation of the flaps, an engine controller determines an operating condition of the flaps and issues an opening or closing command in accordance with the operating condition so that a drive motor is operated to open or close the flaps by links connected to the flaps in response to the opening or closing command.
Here, the amount of inflow air necessary for cooling the engine is liable to become insufficient, causing overheating of the engine in the event that the drive motor does not receive the opening or closing command from the engine controller, in the event that the drive motor does not operate normally, in the event that the flaps do not substantially move despite normal operation of the drive motor, in the event that power is interrupted to secure the flaps in a closed state, or the like.